Introduces the methods of synoptic climatology (the spatial analysis of climates) and shows its vital importance in the understanding of environmental systems. Constructed around five environmental scenarios: tropospheric ozone concentration, surface wind flows, regional hydrology, local hydrology and acid rain. Applies five sets of analytical methods for each scenario: correlation-based map classification, subjective map interpretation, subjective circulation indices, eigenvector-based map classification and air-mass-based synoptic climatologies. This is a richly illustrated text which uses real observational data as examples.